The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust made the request on the grounds that the animals were destroying important species of trees and palms. It plans to disturb the bats using loud industrial noise, a successful ploy used on bats in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

Mr Garrett’s approval came with strict conditions, including supervision by an independent observer group with expertise in animal biology and grey-headed flying foxes.

But Bat Advocacy argued in the Federal Court that the minister had failed to take into account the gardens were a critical roosting habitat, and that he did not consider conflict with humans elsewhere. It also argued the minister failed to consider information concerning previous unsuccessful attempts to relocate colonies elsewhere.

Bats are an economic boon worth approximately $23 billion per year, and possibly up to $54 billion, to U.S. agriculture, a study in today’s issue of Science estimates. Their voracious appetite for insects—a colony of 150 brown bats eats about 1.3 million pesky, crop-chomping bugs each year—means that bats function as effective, and free, natural pesticides: here.

The California leaf-nosed bat can hear a cricket’s steps. AZ’s Kofa Refuge helped protect a roost in an old mine: here.

April 2011: The relentless spread of a killer bat fungus continues across America, as Kentucky becomes the 16th state to find infected bats. A suspect little brown bat from a cave in Trigg County, Kentucky, was submitted to testing to the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, which confirmed it was suffering from white nose syndrome: here.